Monday, 22 September 2008

Because we atheists are the petty, immoral ones, right?

In what can only be called a display of true Christian values, our lovely bunch of freethinkers on campus have just been hit with a bit of a shock: the large poster for our University of Alberta Atheists and Agnostics group has been vandalized.

Sprawled across the canvas in what appears to be Sharpie, some "tolerant" person has written "God loves you!" and "Jesus is coming!", and added a couple of hearts and crosses to top it all off. Admittedly, it's not as harsh as something like "Burn in hell, atheist scum", but nevertheless, this is a blatant display of the hypocrisy in the Christian community: they talk about love and peace and tolerance, and in the same breath someone vandalizes a completely inoffensive poster of their opposition.

Perhaps it was simply done by some random person "for teh lulz". Perhaps not. Undoubtedly, the Christian groups on campus will dismiss this as an act by someone who isn't "a true Christian" (and frankly, I don't think any of the groups were involved - I'd like to think they have a bit more maturity than to resort to petty vandalism).

This is the first real act of disrespect (I hesitate to call it "hatred", since, for all we know, this could have been done by someone who really thought they were trying to save us from hell and were committing an act of "love") that our group has faced. Now that our group is becoming more vocal about different issues, I doubt it will be the last. Let's hope it's the worst.

EDIT: Looks like the bottom portion of the poster, containing our group email address and website address, was cut off as well. Not content with simply vandalizing our work, they took it upon themselves to censor and silence us as well. Incredibly sad and pathetic.

EDIT 2: Seems like PZ Meyers has caught wind of our issue. Pretty awesome. He reaches a much wider audience than our group can, and it's important that we show people what kind of intolerance religious thinking leads to.

No problem, Ian. This incident has really struck a nerve with me. I had always thought people at our school would be above this sort of thing. It's good to see that the Pentecostals were quick to give us their support on this issue.